of Gravesend, "How the change of craft
upsets him. When we had the Hirondelle we
cared for no weather,—in and out—up and
down. Why, at Margate, do you know, they
used to call me the Red Rover, and Fred the
Bold Commodore."

"He ain't below," said the steward, who
was generally somewhere on the skirts of
every conversation, and delighted in the
humour of mischief.

We were pacing the parallel lines of the
quarter-deck planks, as well as we could, for
the log-line that was being hauled in by
Rogers, whose dirty face is still to me one of
the Pleasures of Memory. I looked along,
by the paddle-boxes, on the high fo'ksal
where the Moor, with the stewpan, was
preparing his breakfast. Not there.

But what is that bale of striped horse-blanket,
lying in a wet tumbled heap at the
foot of the black and red striped eighty-
two-pounder of a funnel, whose banner,
now of sulphurous mud-coloured smoke,
drifts on the wind right to the Spanish
coast, miles away to the left? The luggage
is all below. What is it? Suddenly a green
and white face, unshaven, and with frowsy,
tumbled hair, looks out, like a sick Indian
chief from a hut, or a dying gipsy from his
tent, and feebly mutters with a frightened
and despairing stare, "Stew—ard!" It was
the Commodore.

"Where be your gibes now? Where be
your jests, that were wont to set the table
in a roar? What, all gone? What, quite
chapfallen? The Commodore never rallied
again, but we retrieved him from that
wallowing and fallen condition at the foot
of the funnel, where he for two days and
nights had been obstinately groaning like a
wounded bear under a dead tree. He rallied a
good deal when we stopped at Vigo. He
even sat up and supped feebly at some soup,
shaking his head in a painful and ludicrous
way, altogether declining the question, if you
asked him anything about the Rules of the
Royal Yacht Squadron, on whose signals and
rig he had for a few short boastful hours—
"Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at the
helm"—been a loud-voiced and rather
insolent authority. I never saw him again; but
his fickle brained companion, the young
Red Rover, actually got to the length the last
day before we reached Cadiz, of pacing up and
down with the portly captain and discussing
whereabout we were. I really think, if he
had been pressed, lie would have taken the
command at very short notice, and have
steered us safely to the bottom, in strict
accordance with his little black thumbed
book, containing the Rules of the Royal Yacht
Squadron.

After all, in spite of the great fleet of
porpoises that rolled round like black wheels
in the sea; and in spite of the long file of
wild geese that flew by in a dark shotted
line, the voyage was dull. It was always eight
bells, and a meal just gone or just coming;
on Sunday prayers (if the weather were
not too rough), for sailors work in danger,
and pray in safety. It was a scramble
up the shiny cabin-stairs—an hour's read,
stretched out and leaning against a coil of
ropes, a looking out for whales—a pacing
up and down the deck, and then a turn
in from sheer yawning weariness—in spite
even of the steward and his stories about
his friend the Sultan of Trebizond, and
his being wrecked in a "fruiter" not far
from the Gulf of Patras. It was always that
staggering down-stairs, that crawling into
my tray, and sleeping till some new meal
drove one to fling oneself out again on the
floor, rubbing eyes, and with the dew of
a useless lotos-eating sleep on one's forehead.
Then it was the abortive attempt to read
drowsily for some three pages; then more
lounging on deck, and more dog-sleep till
grog-time, and the blessed seasonable eight
hours' oblivion of a sea life.

Our steward was the most chronic
grumbler I ever met with. He had dreadful
complaints against the head-steward, who he was
always going, when he got to port, to pull up, to
teach him "what he had a right to do, and
what he hadn't." So he had against the
sentimental, musical, melancholy-looking
storekeeper, who for a day or two, as he sat
opposite me, I always took for a sea-sick
passenger. His Kathleen Mavourneen, on
the small tooth-comb, was perhaps one of the
most touching pieces of instrumentation
performed in public. He used to weigh out
the day's rice, sugar, tea, &c., and perform
on the accordion alternately; making, in a
word, sandwiches of his duty and his
pleasure. That dark, lamp-lit shop of his, lined
round with boxes of almonds, dried fruits,
and cigars, be made a perfect cave of
harmony. He was a bird, and that was his
cage. He heard the jokes of the steward
with a painful and uneasy smile; a great
contrast to the jolly, flaxen-haired old boy,
the respectable head-steward, at whose
presence our Yorick always put on a churchyard
gravity.

On all occasions of stoppage, delay, or
accident, the steward's was the first face you
saw. He seemed to do the whole ship's
work, and, at spare times, give a friendly
shoulder to the lumbering engine, whose
breathing we could always hear, whatever
part of the ship we were in, and the workings
of whose great metal arms were always
audible. Once a half-naked, coal-stained,
perspiring fireman was knocked down and
cruelly mauled by a mountain of coal falling
on him down in the coal-room. There was
no doctor on board: but the steward washed
him, and bound his poor pale head with
plaisters, like a regular surgeon. He it was
who, singing "I've a Heart that can feel for
Another," mixed with irrelevant verses of the
Last Rose of Summer, instantly started a